Beach Biking, BBQ, & Burgers

Today is my last day at the beach! Wahhh. I’m so sad to leave — especially since Matt and his family are staying until Saturday. I’ve had such a fun time this week, though! Yesterday, we all began our day with a bike ride.

I had a pretty sweet cruiser as my ride (it came with the beach rental house).

The boys — Matt, his brother Chris, and their dad.

We ended up biking about 3.5 miles north until the road ended, then heading back into Duck, a cute OBX town, for lunch. It was perfect biking weather — nice and sunny but not too hot!

In case you’re wondering, here’s how to chain up 6 bikes with one lock. 😉

It was really nice having a kickstand again. I wish my road bike had one!

We went to a BBQ place I forget the name of for lunch. It was tasty! I wasn’t able to finish all of this — it was a massive portion.

We swung by a cute little outdoor market on the way back to buy some sweet potatoes for dinner.

And then, it was time for the beach!

The weather was a bit cooler yesterday and you can’t really tell from these photos, but the waves were a lot rougher, too. All the boys and I were in the water fighting them (and sometimes trying to ride them in on the boogie boards) for about an hour. It was fun and a serious workout, too — we were all tired after!

Dinner last night was over at the Hay’s place! After a quick hot tub session (there’s one here at the beach rental house — amaaaazing), we all got cleaned up and headed on over with various provisions. Here I am with Matt, his brother Chris and wife Jess, and his parents:

On the menu for last night: burgers!

The guys made some seriously delicious burgers — they mixed in some onions, garlic, and various spices into the meat before grilling them.

We also had homemade sweet potato chips, courtesy of Matt’s dad! He brought a fryer down with him — these were amazing — so fresh and crispy!

Plus a salad from Mrs. Hay — deeeelish — great dressing, I’m not sure what it was!

My plate!

While we ate, we were treated to an amazing sunset.

The photos don’t really do it justice, but it was beautiful — lots of purples and pinks!

And then, dessert. Aren’t these cute?!

This would be adorable for a 4th of July BBQ — just make any sort of cupcake and stick a cute flag in them! These were carrot pineapple cupcakes and they were great — very moist and not TOO sweet. A friend of the Hay’s who came to stay the rest of the week made them and I don’t have the recipe, unfortunately!

We also had some homemade chocolate chip cookies:

And some of the leftover homemade peach ice cream from last night. We chased our sweets with some epic board game playing. Have you guys ever played Taboo? It was fun!

Off to enjoy my last day! It’s a beautiful one. I’ll be making the drive back to DC later tonight!

Yes sir, that food looks sumptuous. I especially love the sweet potato chips. I like to make sweet potato fries too. I would ask Matt, “you mean you aren’t going back with me” and then fake a tear. Teehee.